album review
Album Review: My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall
After over a decade of following My Morning Jacket’s career, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll prefer some of their albums over others, and oddly enough that’s lead to me anticipating their new albums more keenly than I do most other acts. One of the thing’s I’ve always admired about MMJ is …
Not Forgotten: Harry Nilsson – Nilsson Schmilsson
Harry Nilsson was something of an anomaly in the music industry. He was undeniably a top-draw songwriter, however the majority of his best known hit singles were covers. He never performed live, yet such was his reputation as a hell-raiser and general mischief maker, it has subsequently clouded the fact that he was a genuinely …
Album Review: Amber Run – 5AM
Amber Run proves to us all that popular music can still be sincere. After releasing a handful of EPs and singles the past few years, we’ve finally been gifted with a full-length album, produced by the magnificent Mike Crossey. 5AM is a moment of clarity in a world full of noise. Whilst you’ll recognise ‘Spark’ …
Not Forgotten: T.Rex – Electric Warrior
The gap between being a ‘serious’ album act and being a ‘disposable’ pop act was still relatively wide back in the early 70s. The more album-orientated acts had a couple of hit singles at most (if indeed they even released singles), whereas the acts that appeared on Top of the pops had hit albums, but …
Not Forgotten: The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
After years of struggling in the alt-rock wilderness, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots was the first release by The Flaming Lips that you could say had been ‘long awaited’ by just about anybody outside of North America. Sure they had their small bands of admirers scattered across the globe previously, but The Soft Bulletin had …
Album Review: Wire – ‘Wire’
As a band Wire are far more accomplished and creative, than to rest their laurels on past glories. Throughout their, almost, 40 year existence, they have constantly produced music that is very much of the here and now. Maybe not so much in the limelight, but their presence has been constant, not exactly underground, more …
Not Forgotten – Mott the Hoople – Mott
Having established themselves in the late 60s as Dylan and Stones infused rockers, Mott the Hoople spent the next few years with a reputation of a storming live act whose studio material failed to capture the magic they routinely produced on stage. After four albums for Island Records in which they explored hard rock, country …
Album Review: They Might Be Giants – Glean
Do you remember when music’s primary function was to provide fun entertainment? It’s something that has been increasingly overlooked in recent years, and the majority of attempts to remind us of it have been dismissed as disposable pop confectionary that it was impossible to take seriously. After all, proper musical statements demand to be taken …
Not Forgotten: Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Brain Salad Surgery
‘Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends’ How’s that for a killer opening line? Read it again. It’s brilliant. It’s irresistable, pulling you in, promising a life-affirming musical experience and ramps up the anticipation for what can only be one of the greatest rock albums of all time. Except that it doesn’t …
Reissue: Rush – All the World’s a Stage
For all Rush’s reputation as dazzling progressive rockers on their studio albums, they have an enviable parallell reputation as a thunderously hard rocking live act. While their 70s studio albums are heavy on meticulously played brainiac sci-fi / fantasy concepts, their first live offering, All the World’s a Stage, confirmed that when it came to …